Sportaloo - Not ever tried the Kinvara but from a quick google search I can tell you one main difference, the fastwitch's seem to generally be a bit cheaper! I can pick up pairs of Fastwitch's for around £35 by picking them up when I see a good offer (currently have 6 pairs stocked up in the cupboard as I get through a pair a month!)

Well, that went better than expected. 2:49:06, all off-road including some quite muddy sections, and won by a long way (more than 5 minutes, but had left before the 2nd place finished, so possibly more). I was hoping for laps in the region of low-15s (x12) for around 3 hours, but the leaders started at 14:10 for the first 3 laps and I just maintained that all the way. Negative split by a minute, last lap was the fastest of the 12 (13:46), and felt like I could have carried on for several more laps (no cramps, soreness etc.). No idea how how/why I felt that good!

I'm wondering whether the course was short, but they claimed to have measured the lap to the metre. (Didn't wear a Garmin.)

Full report will follow in due course!

PS No calories taken on during the race and maybe 7-8 sips of water only.

Finished off my week and month with 15 today, a couple of miles too many as got distances for the route wrong but never mind, took last couple very slow as a result. 271 miles for the month, think that's the most I've ever done.

Happy Easter everyone. I foolishly drank six pints of ale last night despite knowing I had 18M w/ 14@MP to do today. I had to put my JFDI head on, and drag myself out of the door a couple of hours later than planned, even adjusting for the clocks going forward. As I'm visiting my parents this weekend, I was able to run a new route that was blessedly flat compared to my usual courses. Along the Wirral Way for those who may be interested. The good news is that I absolutely nailed the run! The 14@MP averaged 7:03 per mile which is comfortably under my revised target (sorry, Tergat) for MK Marathon. Plus, it actually felt good! I do feel as if my fitness has rocketed this week. I banked 70 miles and felt pretty good doing it. Peaking at the right time I hope, with 5 weeks to go until race day.

Not read back properly yet so will do a proper post later. But just wanted to say - I know coro is a lovely bloke and stuff, but when someone who's done about 4 miles all year goes out and does 22 miles in 2'19 I feel compelled to want to punch him

A 20 for me today making 58 for the week and feeling pretty good. Still only on for a V40 GFA though.

Hurt the calf yet again dancing last night but it doesn't really hurt when I run except on steep hills. There's some strengthening to do there though - I suspect that as I run a bit slower these days I'm more flat-footed and don't strengthen them enough. I also don't really cycle any more and that might make a difference.

I did have bigger plans for today's long run, like upping it to 24 and running a hard progressive. That was until some wise words from Marigold who I ran half a mile with on the seafront yesterday on his way back from his DNS. Ended up running the scheduled 22 @ 7m/m ave. Could have done with a few more yards though as the monthly total finishes @ 353.96mi.

you lot put me to shame, as usual no miles at MP today, intended to but legs said no.

10 @ 8' pace, then 4 @ 7'15 (ie. PMP +20s), then 6 more at about 8'05 pace, then 5.5 more home at avg 9'15 pace. So 24.6 in 3:22 (8'13 avg), bringing up 72.7 miles for the week and 260 for the month - all three record mileages.

I've been away all weekend and just had a massive read back. Great racing and training by all. Hope all the niggles being reported are just that and clear up.

York Park Run for me on Saturday and a victory in 17:03, to add to Leeds & Burnley (I'm coming for you all!). Annoyed I couldn't sneak a 16:xx after running 17:00 in my last one. Followed by 10m along the Ouse today at 6:55 pace. Going for 23m tomorrow which will be my longest run of the campaign.

Only 175 miles for me in March after missing 7 days with a sore achilles. No pain for about two weeks though so I'm hoping it was nothing serious and haven't missed too much in the grand scheme of things.

Tmap - Clare Balding is fantastic but why oh why oh why oh why are they starting to show the women's boat race on telly now? (In fact, the women's race will be shown in full in a couple of years time). They have got equality just SO WRONG if they think that two lots of toffs in a boat is fairer than just one lot of toffs.

Sweedo - not doing VLM (wouldn't have run a marathon today if I was), but bodes well for the marathon part of the Ironman in 12 weeks.

ES - good effort getting that run done with a hangover, looks like you might not be as far from sub-3 fitness as you thought!

Sx9 - don't worry about struggling to do the MP miles, you're upping the mileage so it's not surprising that you're finding it difficult to hit target paces.

Shame we lost the Boat Race, but at least it was a clean race and the best crew won. Having said that, we were using a white boat, so that would have cost us a few lengths compared to their yellow. I don't understand why they haven't tried using a red one yet.

LD - I just said something similar to the Mrs and she wasn't impressed with my opinion. The section where they made the presidents play dinosaur crazy golf was fairly cringeworthy, but the rest wasn't bad.

At least it used to be fought out between proper children of prvielege in singlets as opposed to handpicked rowers in advertising suits. Crikey when the chinless wonders with their huge inheritances sell their souls to the devil for money you know the world's a changed place.

OS - moi sandbagging? You're closer with your opinion on Spartacus' cleanliness! All I'm saying is I may be relatively fit (judging by experience and recent telemetry readouts) but I won't be reaching for the kitchen sink. Don't have any real huge A races this year but VLM certainly isn't one of 'em. Not sure how that equates to sandbagging as I haven't been making excuses and certainly won't be posting a better time than has been intimated...unless it's a mile or three short.

JH1 - Jees - they're a red card offence if I ever I saw one. As the inventor of red shoe speed it takes a pretty poor pair of scoobies for me to say that too! They'll go well with an m-dot dressing gown and PJ's. You gonna get the twatoo wiile you're at it? Mate of mine loves Big Mac's so he's got the golden arches on his ankle.

A lot to lose little to gain from this point forward in terms of fitness. Or vice versa in terms of weight.

Whoops - forget Padams. As I said before your training pace is and always will be my heyday pace which is just on the shy side of reasonable.

Home Run - think you've probably got it wrong about instant gratification. Thinking about it, I don't think any young kids would be under any illusions that to make it as a top sports person requires a lot of hard work. In fact, they already work much harder in school/uni/work now than my generation. The reason why xfactor, masterchef etc is so damned popular is that the media (who only ever give us what we demand of them) have just tapped into Joe Public's preference for formulaic, non-challenging viewing. It's us, the average viewer, that want the instant gratification really. We have always had an insatiable demand for cheap thrills, pantomime villains and a sob story - but the days when the BBC ignored our baser instincts and instead gave us quality that we didn't really want or deserve are long gone. And there's always some mugs who will serve themselves up as fodder for the TV camera. So, 95% of the population are happy.

A bit of glitz and glamour is no bad thing if you want to attract young kids to take up a sport. But athletics is presented as the likes of Helen Clitheroe puffing and panting round some cold, obscure and ugly cross country course, with Brendon Foster droning on. Most other sports have glammed up and moved on.

Even I would prefer to watch four plebs cooking for each other and holding up scorecards in a taxi to decide the winner, than a steroid-fuelled bulgarian chuck a feckin discuss.

Previously bookmarked threads are now visible in "Followed Threads". You can also manage notifications on these threads from the "Forum Settings" section of your profile settings page to prevent being sent an email when a reply is made.

Runner's World is a publication of Hearst Magazines UK which is the trading name of The National Magazine Company Ltd, 72 Broadwick Street, London, W1F 9EP. Registered in England 112955. All rights reserved. Runner's World, Part of the Hearst UK wellbeing network